Dark Souls 3 Review

If the first Dark Souls depicted a world gracefully drifting towards the apocalypse, Dark Souls 3 shows one on a spiraling, feverish descent directly into it. It’s a fierce and punishing behemoth that dares you to take a step forward before knocking you back, again and again and again. But with a bleak, yet beautiful world that’s enthralling to explore and packed with secrets to find, I always felt compelled to come back, eager for that familiar thrill of overcoming even the most exacting challenges.

Dark Souls 3 does suffer from occasional framerate dips and a few underwhelming boss fights, but beyond that, its epic scale, aggressive obstacles, and rich development of existing lore make it the grandest and fiercest Dark Souls adventure yet.

The Kingdom of Lothric and the lands that lie beyond contain some of the most visually striking places developer From Software has ever crafted. Even though many of its locations do recycle ideas from familiar locales (like the Catacombs and yet another poison swamp), they're distinguished well enough to feel distinct from their past game parallels. There was never a moment when I didn’t feel captivated by their strong sense of place and the amount of gorgeous detail put into each environment. I stared out in awe atop the crumbling medieval stronghold of the High Wall, taking in the view of its surrounding valleys and snow-capped mountains, while all around me the fort’s frenzied denizens turned to stone and wood mid-prayer. I trudged through the poison swamps of the Road of Sacrifices while battling seething, cross-bearing beasts, braved Irithyll’s chilling, Tower of Latria-like dungeon, and got lost in a multi-story maze of curse-ridden bookshelves in the Grand Archives.

Every level is not only full of breathtaking architectural marvels and the most minute environmental embellishments, but also dense with things to do and see from moment to moment. But those views are more intense than Dark Souls 3 can handle – dramatic framerate dips (which we saw even on an ultra-high-end PC with two GeForce GTX Titan Zs) caused a lot of these fantastic looking areas to drag along, sometimes down to 20 to 25 FPS. But the rest of the time, when it is running at a smooth 60 (on PC only), Dark Souls 3 is a sight to see.

Exploration of the aforementioned places is the cornerstone of this series, and Dark Souls 3’s world does a lot to reward an inquisitive and thorough nature. You could spend hours in a single area, diligently investigating every dark corner or side road, and be consistently rewarded with some interesting story revelation, new gear, mini bosses, and even entire secret areas. Illusory walls make a triumphant return, driving me to compulsively slash away at suspicious-looking dents or bricks in search of precious equipment. I got a pretty high rate of return on doing that, too, from the earliest levels to the very late game. Crystal lizards also must have had a breeding season, because there are a ton of them slithering around, ripe for the slaying and with lots of twinkling titanite for leveling up special weapons.

Dark Souls 3’s world isn’t as openly interconnected as that of Dark Souls 1 (where you can freely move between high and low-level areas), but individual areas still weave their own branching paths together seamlessly, creating twisting mazes of overlapping passages and shortcuts that were a joy to lose myself in. Perhaps it’s because of this lack of interconnectivity that Dark Souls 3 feels larger than the first game. Early and late-game levels don’t directly connect as often, so the more you progress linearly from level to level, the farther it seems like you’ve journeyed.

Your progress is marked by massive landmarks, which lend the world a cohesive quality. In several early levels, I could maintain sight of the High Wall from which I’d originally come; while trying to extinguish a series of beacons as part of the entry process for a boss, I scaled a huge ladder through the thick canopy of trees blocking my view and could see clearly where I was in relation to the first level. I recalled seeing nearly this exact place too, from another spot on the High Wall.

his solid sense of space and geography elevates Dark Souls 3’s level design beyond the relatively weak blueprint of Dark Souls 2, making a mostly triumphant return to the kind of large-scale, world-focused journey of Dark Souls 1. Perhaps the only things sadly missing from Dark Souls 3’s environments are the kind of interesting platforming challenges present in places like Dark Souls 1’s Sen’s Fortress or Crystal Cave.

Kindling Friendships

There are plenty of interesting characters to meet throughout Dark Souls 3, some new and some returning. The voice acting is great as always and characters have a ton of dialogue to exhaust, offering up plenty of new emotes to perform, dropping useful hints about the world and your role in it, and generally cementing themselves as the next in a line of odd, yet lovable Souls personalities. Like in past games, NPC questlines remain mysteries to be solved over the long term of your adventure, so in my first 35-hour playthrough they weren’t all completed. I let a couple characters die because of my failure to encounter them in certain areas or meet certain circumstances, but in keeping with true Dark Souls fashion, even death has its rewards: those conclusions still had something interesting to offer in the way of tragic closure, sometimes tied to other plot details in startling ways, or neat new items.

I look forward to following these questlines more closely in future playthroughs, but I worry that a few bugs I ran into in my first one might impede that. Early on, one particularly sneaky character appeared to ask me for forgiveness for a past misdeed, but it was my first time meeting him in Dark Souls 3. I later found out that he was supposed to show up at a certain spot much earlier, but he must’ve missed his cue. Another character who showed up after I’d spoken to a covenant leader swore the two of us were enemies from then on, even though I had never met her prior to that. I wasn’t even part of the covenant – even though joining any one of Dark Souls 3’s eight covenants is now as convenient as snapping a badge in place in your inventory, I hadn’t done that here. But I suppose for this disgruntled NPC, just talking to the leader is good enough.

The Art of the Kill

The brutality of Dark Souls 3’s worlds and the beasts that roam there are matched only by its vicious new moves called weapon arts, which add variety and style to an already strong combat system: one moment I’m crushing enemies with the devastating weight of my greatsword, the next I’m turning the giant hunk of curved steel into a graceful propeller of destruction.

Besides resting at a bonfire, the primary way of recovering FP is Ashen Estus. You can easily allot a number of uses for these blue flasks by speaking with the blacksmith in the hub world. If you have a maximum of 10 flasks (increased by giving Estus Shards found in the world to the blacksmith), then you can designate five for healing Estus and five for Ashen Estus, a decision which can be changed anytime you want. Having a way to recharge FP on the go means more freedom to use spells and pyromancies, which means more opportunity to play dependently on magic – great news for spellcasters.Executing these skills use up focus points (FP), the newly added blue bar below your HP and above your stamina that also acts as mana for casting spells and pyromancies. When your FP runs out, some weapon arts, like the aforementioned greatsword propeller (Exiled Greatsword – seriously, use it), start costing stamina instead – a sensible and acceptable trade-off. Certain other skills, like a lightning spear that lets you charge at enemies with an electrifying blast, let you complete the move without the elemental damage until you recover FP, so running out of FP isn’t necessarily urgent or mood-killing. It becomes far more important when you’re a spellcaster, because the amount of spell charges you have depends on FP, but the system is actually more generous than it is limiting. That’s because of a new reusable item called Ashen Estus.

Weird and Wonderful Weapons

Some of the most awesome-looking weapon arts, and one of the most impressive strides in Dark Souls 3’s combat in general, come out of its dual-wielded weapon sets. A clean system for dual-wielding most combinations of weapons and an awesome arsenal designed specifically for it means it’s now actually viable to have a dual-wielding build in Dark Souls. The risk of not having a shield has always been one part of what’s so enticing about dual-wielding, and some of Dark Souls 3’s weapons are just aggressive and multipurpose enough to make you not even miss it.

One greatsword and dagger combo in particular lets you perform several wide, sweeping slashes, driving groups of enemies back before delivering a final, mid-air blow. You can also quickly lock onto new enemies mid-chain, prioritizing dangerous or vulnerable individuals in a mob to maximize the effect of your attacks. I unleashed this attack to deal with situations where a group of smaller enemies surrounded a larger and more dangerous leader, slashing away at the minions before executing the last heavy blow on the main enemy in the middle.

Weapon arts also make shields more fun to use by giving them more variety. Some shields lack the parry ability, using the same command to instead quickly perform your right-hand weapon’s skill without the need to manually two-hand it. Some shields are capable of shield-bashing attacks, too – yes, this means you can dual-wield greatshields. In fact, you can dual-wield just about any combination of weapon with complete right and left-handed movesets, which makes the opportunities for awesome and bizarre builds seem nearly endless. That’s not even counting boss weapons, which come with unique weapon skills that, paired with Dark Souls 3’s fantastic collection of new and returning armor sets, allow you to not just look like your favorite characters and bosses, but perform their signature attacks as well.

THE VERDICT

If Dark Souls 3 truly is the last in the series as we know it, then it’s a worthy send-off. Weapon arts allow stylish and versatile new moves without tarnishing the purity of the combat system. Lothric’s awe-inspiring locations provide visually stunning arenas for rigorous exploration and fierce face-offs with hosts of deadly enemies and even deadlier bosses. While not all the risky changes land as neatly as others, Dark Souls 3 is a powerful journey and the sequel the series truly deserves.